The two young attackers lived in the former pit village of Edlington in South Yorkshire for only three weeks. But during that brief period, in March and April this year, the brothers, aged 12 and 10, first attacked one 11-year-old boy and then a week later went on to torture and sexually assault two other boys.

"This is not something that has happened because of the community. It is that people have come into the community and committed a crime there," said Acting Superintendent Ian Bint from the Doncaster police force, who has coordinated the community response to the attack. "The people of Edlington are the victims in this."

The brothers, who cannot be named for legal reasons, arrived in Edlington from a deeply chaotic family background.

They had spent the bulk of their lives living with their mother, her long-term partner and five siblings in a semi-detached house on an estate of social housing in nearby Doncaster.

Following an apparent household break-up, the boys‚ who were by that stage on the child protection register and already well known to police and social workers, moved to live with foster parents, aged in their 60s, in Edlington.

Former neighbours in Doncaster said that while the brothers were known as violent troublemakers, few thought that this was surprising, given the environment they had grown up in.

One resident of the estate, despite repeated problems with the brothers, said: "All they wanted was a bit of sympathy – a bit of love from their parents. For them to get into trouble they were getting attention from their parents."

The woman, who asked not to be named, said the younger brother, now 10, was, in particular, "crying out for attention" from his mother and stepfather.

Other neighbours said the boys and their siblings were frequently unwashed and were fed at home only intermittently.

One woman said she had made frequent attempts to get social services to intervene. "If social services had acted sooner maybe those kids wouldn't have been fighting for their lives and whatever," she said. "I must have been phoning them for the last 18 months." Some neighbours said the boys' mother was neglectful in part because of an alleged severe cannabis habit developed when she was a teenager.

But whatever the reasons, one thing seems clear: long before they carried out the attack which they admitted yesterday, the brothers had developed a reputation for violence.

Already excluded from their primary school, the boys had appeared several times in court in connection with violent incidents. The older of the pair, who was 11 when the Edlington attacks took place, received a 12-month supervision order for an assault in January.

Locals on their former estate spoke of an incident when one of the brothers allegedly attacked an 11-year-old girl with a baseball bat. While the rest of the neighbourhood was some way from a stereotypical sink estate, the boys' family house stood out, with a wrecked car and abandoned fridge in the front garden, and a "beware of the kids" sign by the front door, former neighbours said. One man said: "Everyone is so pleased they've gone they're thinking of holding a street party. I can put my car out now without fear it will be wrecked. I can let my kids out to play now."